Wild Ireland
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What is the purpose of tonight’s special Wild Ireland programme?
Now, next week on Mooney Goes Wild, we dig deep into
the archives for some more of Terry Flanagan's reports. For this special programme I'm starting up in County Donegal, not far from Bunkraner. In twenty nineteen I travelled to Wild Ireland, a newly opened wildlife sanctuary, and I went with the intention of seeing a group of animals that once roamed the country but sadly are no longer to be found in the wild.
That's an incredible sound that Killian. Isn't it amazing? Especially on a misty morning like this in the hills of Donegal to hear the wolves howling again here for the first time in three hundred years.
They're fantastic. They're much bigger than I thought they'd be.
Bear in mind, Terry, that these guys are only six months old, so they're they're big, big animals and they're gonna get a lot bigger.
Now, Killian McLaughlin, you are a biologist and you're a solicitor. Yes. And you've started a sanctuary up here in County Donegal. Wild Arnold. Tell me a little bit about it. Tell me what it is here, what we're looking at.
Okay, so this all started in my back garden when I was a young lad. I used to rescue crows and hedgehogs and all sorts of animals and very often animals couldn't be released back into the wild, so in my back garden is where they stayed. Eventually the back garden became too small and I always had the ambition of purchasing a large plot of land and developing a wildlife. Sanctuary. So from there the concept of wild Ireland really evolved. I always noticed that uh when people used to come and visit my little sanctuary in the back garden that they were fascinated by the wild animals, particularly the native wild animals.
But
that's what you
would have had then. Yes. Looking in here now at these walls and listening to them, sure. They're not native animals or certainly not now.
Not now, Terry, but they were native here at one time. In fact wolves were so common in Ireland that Ireland was once nicknamed Wolfland. But how long is it since the last wolf was here in Ireland? The last wolf was killed in Ireland in seventeen eighty-six in County Carlow. Right. By a pack of Irish wolfhounds. It was hunted down from Mount Leinster and killed by the pack of wolves, which is pretty incredible. That's not that long ago when you think about it. The last wolf in Ulster, I believe, was killed about twenty years before that. Yeah. So
they would have been fairly common in Ireland at that time if that's
Yes, they were very common in Ireland. In fact, when Oliver Cromwell put the price on their heads, there was up to a thousand wolf pelts being exported out of Ireland every year for the fashion industry or whatever they used them for back then. It was Cromwell when he came to Ireland, he put the nail in the coffin for the wolf. He put a price on their heads. He put five pounds on a male wolf and six pound on a female wolf's head. And then you had these professional wolf hunters coming into Ireland to make a living. That was a lot of money back then. Yeah.
Looking at that one there, that that big one. It's licking the other one on the head as they're howling.
Yes, that is a socialization. So wolves, as we all know, howl. There are several reasons why wolves howl. This what you're seeing in front of you now is socialization. I always compare it to us having a sing song on an eye-out or whatever, you know, it's a a way of socializing. The second reason that wolves howl is to mark their territory. So when they're howling, they're telling all the wolves in the area, This is our territory, keep out.
How did Killian McLaughlin’s backyard rescue evolve into the Wild Ireland sanctuary?
And the third reason that wolves howl is Is when they get lost. So if a wolf has become separated from their family, they will start howling and then the family will hear them. How uh sound travels very well through the forest and then they can locate their family by shouting, I'm over here where Aries and they respond and he can find his way back to his family. So that that's the three reasons.
Now you have three wolves here, you have them in a a really nice enclosure, a lovely pen there for them.
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